Israel backs Palestinian units in West Bank ahead of US visit
● Permits rare in Jewish settler zone ● Kushner to call for $50bn in aid
Israel’s cabinet on Tuesday unanimously approved a proposal to build over 700 housing units for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in addition to 6,000 Israeli settlement housing units.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government advanced the proposal.
It appeared timed to coincide with a visit by President Donald Trump’s soninlaw and chief Mideast envoy Jared Kushner, who is expected in the region this week.
The permits would be for construction in Area C, the roughly 60 per cent of the West Bank where Israel exercises full control and where most Jewish settlements are located.
Netanyahu’s government has approved the construction of tens of thousands of settler homes, but permits for Palestinian construction are extremely rare.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war.
The Palestinians seek these areas as parts of a future state. Most of the international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law and an impediment to a twostate solution.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, responded to the Israeli decision by saying the Palestinians have the right to build on all territory occupied in 1967 “without needing a permit from anyone”.
“We will not give any legitimacy to the construction of any settlement,” he added.
The Westernbacked Palestinian Authority has control of civilian affairs in Areas A and B, which include the West Bank’s main Palestinian cities and towns.
Since capturing the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has settled some 700,000 of its citizens in the two areas, which are considered occupied territory by most of the world.
Touring new construction in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, Netanyahu said yesterday that “not a single settlement or a single settler will ever be uprooted”.
Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a religious nationalist in Netanyahu’s government, wrote on Facebook that he backed the construction of Palestinian housing in Area C because “it prevents the establishment of a terrorist Arab state in the heart of the land” and asserts Israeli sovereignty over Area C.
Kushner is returning to the Middle East this week to promote the administration’s call for a $50 billion economic support plan for the Palestinians, which would accompany a Mideast peace proposal that the administration has yet to release. The Palestinians have rejected the agreement out of hand and cut off all contact with the Trump administration, saying its policies are unfairly biased toward Israel. The Trump administration’s Mideast team is spearheaded by people with close ties to Israel’s settler movement.
His ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, recently told the New York Times that Israel has the “right” to annex some of the West Bank. Both critics and supporters of the settlements say the White House’s attitude has encouraged a jump in settlement activity.
In 2017 Trump announced the US recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, overturning decades of official US policy, and last year the US stopped contributing to the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), which has been supporting Palestinian refugees since 1949.